We’re all mobile marketers now.

Can you feel the balance shifting? Right now, we’re at a technological tipping point. Tablets will be in the hands of some 82 million users in the U.S. by 2015.¹Smartphones are on the verge of surpassing regular handsets in number.² And more Internet traffic will be coming from mobile devices than PCs by as early as 2013.³ In short, mobile is becoming dominant.

So…how are you feeling about your mobile marketing efforts?

Heres what we’re hearing from the Field…

A lot of you are searching for answers to questions such as:

• What’s the best way to optimize content for mobile?
• Do I need a different approach for tablets vs. phones?
• What are the cost implications?

In this FieldNotes – and the next two – we’ll attempt to clear up some of the static.

A priority – not an afterthought.

It may be the norm now to design for the desktop first and then optimize for mobile, but we feel that paradigm may soon be turned on its head. In many areas, such as enterprise users in the field, mobile is driving the bus now and clearly demands a different approach to design and content.

Let’s say your target is B2B users attached at the hip to their iPads. Given your budget, you may be thinking, “I’ll just send them to our website and call it a day.” Well, not so fast. For one thing, you may need to rethink various interface behaviors, like hovering and clicking, which can’t be performed the same way on a touchscreen.

Taking it a step further, we believe you shouldn’t think of traditional desktop menus and navigation as the interface at all. Content is the interface.⁴ The experiences that generate “stickiness” or repeat engagement are the ones that let users directly manipulate content or information. That requires making full use of gestures – swiping through photos or rotating objects, for instance. The best design will also exploit capabilities unique to the device, from location-based services to accelerometers to cameras (think of Facebook’s camera functionality, only available on tablets and phones).

Rethinking mobile phone development.

The case for intelligent content design on phones is even clearer. Almost two- thirds of mobile phone users say they’re unlikely to return to a website not optimized for mobile.⁵ And for good reason. Cramming a desktop site onto a phone is like packing for a month-long vacation using just a carry-on bag. Links are hard to click on, if you can find them at all. And the orientations of the screens are different. How would the Mona Lisa look changed from portrait to landscape mode? You’re going to lose something.

When optimizing a site for mobile phones, be sure to:

• Avoid user-unfriendly elements. For example, replace long forms with a simple click-to-call button.
• Pare content back to the essentials. Need guidance? Check the site analytics to see how users are interacting with your site now.
• Keep it fast. At mobile phone network speeds, an additional second or two of load time could mean losing a customer.

Stay tuned.
Be sure to look for our next installment on whether to put your money into a mobile website or a native app.

¹ Forrester Research, 2011
² The Nielsen Company, 2011
³ Gartner, 2011
⁴ Edward Tufte
⁵ Google, 2011